SOURCE: Gish, Robert Franklin. “Jimmy Santiago Baca: Writing the Borderlands of Ethnic and Cultural Crisis.” In Beyond Bounds: Cross-Cultural Essays on Anglo, American-Indian & Chicano Literature, pp. 145-50. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1996.

In the following essay, Gish concentrates on Baca's efforts to cross cultural and ethnic boundaries as a writer.

“Language made bridges of fire between me and everything I saw. Writing bridged my divided life of prisoner and free man.”

—Jimmy Santiago Baca, Working in the Dark: Reflections of a Poet of the Barrio

Few contemporary authors write and live across as many ethnic, cultural, and genre boundaries as Jimmy Santiago Baca. Consider his artistic, cultural, and ethnic identities and roles—each defined by its own set of expected and established boundaries that Baca continues to redefine, continues to cross: poet, novelist, essayist, scriptwriter, convict, honored citizen, actor, producer, lecturer, celebrity, culture hero, Chicano, Indian, southwesterner...